Hello, Possums, and welcome back to another episode of the Justin Trudeau Hour, coming to you live today from Rideau Cottage on the grounds of Rideau Hall, yet again. Just like old times, really. Will we have new porchscaping, Possums? An appearance from the family dog? Will we get the Sophie square? One is on tenterfuckinghooks, one is!
Today’s briefing is named after Napoleon, in accordance with our overarching nomenclature theme. Still no correct guesses in the comments section as to what that might be. But some plenty great visuals!
Justin Trudeau as Napoleon, from (where else) the National Post
We shall see if either of my computers can make it through today’s #BriefingBingo alive. One can’t get on the internet, the other refuses to boot.
We’re running a bit behind, so today’s intro will be abbreviated in the interests of expeditiousness which, unusually for a Canadian political interest, has no money or votes at all to trade for influence, but where were we? Oh right, getting to the point.
Here’s the video:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addresses Canadians on the federal government’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic.
Well, that was a right Royal or at least Imperial clusterfuck, wasn’t it?
You can bet Napoleon would have had the whole CPAC team beheaded today.
So let’s for once use the CBC video and you’ll want to skip to 13:30 to avoid all the talking heads CBC has on salary and has to give airtime to. Well, for all I know they’re very good, but they’re just the warm-up for the actual bingo, right Possums?
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, federal ministers, and public health officials update Canadians on the latest measures the federal government is taking to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Well, here we are again, Possums, doing another Covid Briefing Bingo just when we thought we’d never see another. With the continuously-imminent election uh, imminent, Justin Trudeau has an awful lot of other things on his plate, which is no doubt silver to match the spoons.
Oh, did I ever tell you my theory about why Boris Johnson hates boiled eggs? I did not, unless you were in the comments section of Boris’ blog about fifteen years ago, so here goes. We love a good digression around these parts, we surely do.
So, Boris Johnson, currently the Prime Minister of the Technically United But Actually Rapidly Disintegrating Kingdom, hates boiled eggs.
Now, you might not care, as I did not, as neither I nor you (in all probability) are egg farmers or egg restaurateurs. But there’s a delicious hook or two here: Schadenfreude and class war. And inorganic chemistry, which is always cool. We love a good inorganic chemistry digression, especially with lashings of class war and a dollop of Schadenfreude.
When you or I eat eggs, I bet you or I do so with a spoon made of steel. What happens when the steel meets the egg is…the egg gives, and we eat it. When a posh person such as Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson (no really) eats an egg, he does it with a literally silver spoon. Or, if you’re just bougie, silver plate. And what happens when silver meets egg is, the silver reacts with the sulfur compounds in the egg and a really revolting gas is released.
So, the reason BoJo doesn’t like boiled eggs is, class privilege. I say we don’t tell him, and we keep all the nicely boiled and poached eggs to ourselves.
Dining privilege has its own pitfalls, Boris. Take note.
As I sit in the hospital cafeteria at a table alone, because those are the rules, my rage is replaced with a clear understanding of why the pandemic has been handled so poorly by our government. It has never effected them. There is no skin on the game. https://t.co/ZvbUyL5A9u
Even back then it was obvious to all but the blinkered that both Alberta and Ontario were in for a world of hurt and death. These journalists doing their best to erase their tracks might consider thinking twice before laying them in the first place. pic.twitter.com/r4LoLAjW6O
We are still in obedience to our arbitrarily though not randomly chosen naming convention of mystery. Today we are Sunburn, both in adherence to that convention (although we are 99% unconventional here normally ((but not conventionally))) and because we have been forgetting the sunscreen before heading out with Buddy to catch some Pokemon, and it takes better than an hour to hit all the Pokestops in the neighbourhood.
On Parliament Hill, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau discusses the federal government’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic. He is joined virtually by Public Services and Procurement Minister Anita Anand, as well as Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, Dr. Howard Njoo, deputy chief public health officer, and Brigadier-General Krista Brodie, the vice-president of logistics and operations at the Public Health Agency of Canada and head of the country’s vaccine distribution efforts.
And our Bingo cards, ten and counting. New one coming whenever I can be arsed which is anyone’s bet these days:
Let us begin in the accepted narrative fashion, with a flashback. For lo, I am nothing if not acceptably narrative and fashionable.
The revolution will be fabulous
The year, it was many ago. The Place, it was Carleton, or rather a side road several miles outside of town. The occasion was an afternoon ride that my friend and I had taken, she on her rather awful hackney cross Colonel Blake (nicknamed Flakey), and me on a borrowed Quarter Horse hunter called Abby. She, my friend, turned off the road and popped over a jump, encouraging me to follow. I did, despite never having taken a jump that size. Abby had no trouble with it, having gone over that jump probably a dozen times with her owners that summer. I, also, got over the fence; the problem was that the horse and I parted company at some point, landing separately, her on four graceful hooves and me squarely on my butt, sitting straight up with perfect posture for once in my life.
My friends, this is not a good thing to do when falling from a horse.
It took me north of twenty minutes to get back on the horse, which did not surprise anyone later when I was X-rayed and discovered to have broken my back. But back on the horse I did get, because we were three miles from home and this was before cellphones, so we rode all the way back, me crumpled and resting my upper body’s full weight on the horse’s neck, much to her annoyance, but she was a Quarter horse so she just took it rather than dumping me, and we got home and me to the hospital and, after a few weeks of rest I was mostly healed up, but with some lingering nerve damage on my right leg which remains to this day from where the nerve connected with the spinal cord and got partially disconnected, and so it remains to this day. Weakness in the sensory nerves, but the muscle controlling nerves are just fine.
There’s a QAnon army metaphor to be made here, but I’m taking the high road today.
Flash forward to the 90’s, when I, like virtually everyone else in Vancouver, worked for Starbucks. An eight hour shift there will give you a great education in how to work hard (seriously, Starbucks gave me whatever work ethic I possess to this day, never had one before then), an appreciation for finely-prepared beverages, and almost certainly a collection of painful varicose veins if you stay long enough, and I stayed for seven years. The first hour after getting home from work was usually spent with my legs resting against the wall while the rest of my body formed the foot of the “L” configuration, draining my overtaxed blood vessels and trying to make the infernal pinching feeling go away. It took a good five years after leaving retail before my veins stopped bothering me on the reg.
Flash forward to four and a half years ago, when I took a tumble down a flight of stairs, landing on my head. Yet another experience I do not recommend to most people. A few, though. A few of them, they have it coming.
Once I was sufficiently recovered to hold short conversations and notice symptoms I noticed a creeping numbness in my right calf. It felt like a cross between my leg falling asleep, but only from the calf muscle on down to the ankle, and wearing an 80’s legwarmer slouched way down. Now, this was problematic enough, but over the next several weeks and months it crept upward, eventually affecting all of my right leg from the hip on down.
Saw a doctor. Doctor’s advice, as far as I can recall, was “Well, keep an eye on it and try not to fall down.” Sooper. So I kept an eye on it, tried not to fall down, and did my own research. Ended up more or less treating myself by cutting wayyyyyy back on alcohol, taking B vitamins, making sure to get enough Omega 3’s from my diet, and walking miles for exercise. The phenomenon, known in medical circles as “peripheral neuropathy,” began to recede, very slowly. First I got pins and needles in my thigh, then the feeling came back and pins and needles shifted south to my knee, then my knee was fine, and the pins and needles moved on to the calf, then the calf was fine and the ankle was tingling, and then everything seemed back to normal.
The de-tingling, de-neuropathizing, re-normalizing process took in excess of two years, by the way. It ain’t easy to normalize ol’ raincoaster. Ask anyone who’s tried it.
For literal months now, we’ve been naming these after an arbitrarily-chosen convention that has nothing (or very little) to do with the content. It’s almost like a metaphor for politics and media in the 21st Century.
Almost.
Imagine how much better off we would be if political media treated politicians the way Boston sports media treats Boston sports figures
In any case, today we have Sensitive-Nose, which is in line with our naming convention and ALSO literally relevant because after my AZ jab my sense of smell went off the charts (upwards). Which has made living with The Roommate challenging at points, but he does seem to be transitioning to a low FODMAP diet, so that’s something. Not much, but at least now I can light a candle without blowing us all to Kingdom Come.
Please note that arbitrary does not equal random. Hashtag LessonsInPower.
If you think you know our naming convention, put your guesses in the comments section at the bottom of the post. You remember those? Don’t put it on Facebook; I may have once said something about Trump and how firing squads are an opportunity for national healing and a great way to promote volunteerism, and they haven’t allowed me back since Halloween of last year. Some people are so touchy!
On Parliament Hill, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau discusses the federal government’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic. He is joined virtually by Jim Carr, the federal government’s special representative for the Prairies, and Anita Anand, the minister of public services and procurement, as well as by Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, and Dr. Howard Njoo, deputy chief public health officer.
And here are our Bingo cards, all ten of them. Play one or play them all: new one coming soon! That’s 250 squares in play. No wonder I’m always forgetting something!
So named not just for the massive grocery shop-up I’m about to do once this is a wrap, but ALSO for the squirmy little worm that fell out of my hair after my hike of the other day *shudders* and ALSO ALSO yet again after our mystery Overarching Nomenclature Theme that has nothing to do with politics, really. If you think you know what it is, put your guesses in the comments section. So far we have had:
Trudeau feeds baby birbs some gruband yes this is a photoshop
And now to today’s briefing. Here’s our video:
On Parliament Hill, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau discusses the federal government’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic. He is joined virtually by federal ministers François-Philippe Champagne (innovation), Anita Anand (public services and procurement) and Patty Hajdu (health), as well as by Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, and Dr. Howard Njoo, deputy chief public health officer.
